How is the man and the boy's experience with exile (from home whatever it may have been) is both alienating and enriching, and how the experience illuminates the meaning of the work as a whole.

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I think the very struggle to keep his boy alive forces the father to do "bad" things. It is this Hell the world has turned into that makes goodness next to impossible if one needs to survive. The father and son are "the good guys" as far as humanly possible. The son personifies "the good guys" in his heart. Both show little malice unless attacked and really I doubt the boy has any malice at all. This in itself is the enriching part of the novel. The meaning of the work is played out through the relationship of boy and man. The boy, in particular, becomes an extension of hope in a world that has been damned.